GLOBAL POLICY
The Paris climate goals demand a rapid, just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We’re pushing governments to lead the way by adopting policies to end oil and gas production.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
In order to achieve climate goals, governments and other decision makers must support a just and equitable move away from fossil fuels. We are pushing for precedent-setting leadership from governments to put policies in place to manage the decline of oil and gas and ensure a just transition for fossil-fuel dependent workers and communities.
Building from a growing group of first mover governments, we are pressuring for increasing numbers of national and regional governments to end new licenses and permits for oil and gas production, and to develop plans to wind down their existing production over time.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
Good article in today’s Independent on ethanol, which answers the question is ethanol the answer to reducing our CO2 emissions?
Mike McCarthy, the paper’s environment editor, replies “It would certainly seem so at first sight, not least because the fastest growing greenhouse gas emissions are those from the transport sector, and it is in road transport that biofuels have an immediate application. The best known biofuel, ethanol, which is made from sugar cane or sugar beet, is already being widely used as a motor vehicle fuel in Brazil, which is the world's biggest producer, making 16 billion litres of the stuff
One person who believes he can rid America of its gas-guzzling ways is Rep. Henry Waxman who along with twelve of his House colleagues, has introduced the “Safe Climate Act of 2006.”
OK so now it's official. We all knew that Americans drove gas-guzzling polluting vehicles, but now the Environmental Defence Fund has calculated just how bad things are. And they are bad.
Americans may only have 5% of the world's population but they drive a third of its cars. However because Americans drive further in big and inefficient cars they account for 45 per cent – or nearly half - the carbon dioxide pumped out of exhaust pipes each year, according to EDF's new report "Global Warming on the Road".
First the bad news. According to the US Energy Information Administration, energy use will increase by 71 percent by 2030, with the fastest growth coming from China, India and Latin America.
Now the good news. Energy consumption could easily be cut in half, if clean energy technologies that are currently available were applied now, according to the International Energy Agency.
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
This new report, “Public Enemies: Assessing MDB and G20 international finance institutions’ energy finance” looks at G20 country and MDB traceable international public finance for fossil fuels from 2020-2022 and finds they are still backing at least USD 47 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects.
This briefing assesses Shell’s fossil fuel extraction plans in light of Shell's appeal of a Dutch court verdict requiring the company to take responsibility for its climate pollution. Our analysis shows that Shell continues to plan for levels of oil and gas production and investment that undermine the world’s chances of curtailing climate disaster.
The countries that produce oil and gas from the North Sea (Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) rank among the countries with the greatest economic capacity and responsibility to rapidly phase out extraction, and to finance just transitions to renewable energy solutions domestically and abroad.